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With thousands of people in the U.S. in need of organ replacement, the need for healthy human organs is evident.

Could 3D printers be the solution?

We recently mentioned a 3D bio printer at Cornell University’s Computational Synthesis Laboratory that’s printing silicon tissue, but just how real is the potential to 3D print human organs?

For the answer, PopTech’s Emily Spivack interviewed Dr. Gabor Forgac, founder of Organovo, a company that sells “the world’s only commercial bioprinter proven to create tissue.”

Forgac describes two products his company is currently working on — vascular grafts (blood vessels) and nerve grafts.

“We are building blood vessels using the 3D printing technology but we’re not yet at the point where our vessels can be safely introduced into a living organism. We’re very close but we’re not yet there.”

He also explains that it’s not about replicating a human organ — “We will not be able to reproduce the heart that you have in your body one hundred percent. That is a structure that evolved over millions of years.” — but creating a structure that performs the same function as that organ and can be safely integrated into the body.